Weekly Ketchup

Plus news about Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright's next project

For a week that you would think would have been dominated by April Fool’s Day jokes, there was an abundance of interesting bits of news in these first few days of April. Let’s start, dear reader, with…

MAGNUM FINALLY GETS A STAR?

Entertainment Weekly is reporting that Matthew McConaughey has been offered the role of Thomas Magnum in Universal Picture’s extremely-long-in-development movie version of Magnum, P.I., with the frequent costar of Kate Hudson currently mulling over the script by Rawson Thurber, whose only contribution to the great spectacle that is filmmaking thus far has been 2004’s Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story. I did genuinely enjoy that little sports comedy, but I don’t quite know how that translates to adapting Magnum, P.I. to the big screen. Besides just that though, the obvious issue here is Matthew McConaughey, who I guess sort of has a similar charm to 1980s-era Tom Selleck, but I think too many people firmly equate Selleck to Magnum, that McConaughey is going to be very challenged to overcome that. Besides, Tom Selleck is still in pretty good shape, and it would be cool to see a “Magnum 20 years later” story, in my opinion. With this reportedly a prequel, however, that’s not the way Universal is going.

DIMENSION FILMS IS SHORT CIRCUITING

Variety is reporting that Dimension Films, the Weinstein Co.’s genre division led by brother Bob, has commissioned the original screenwriters of 1986’s Short Circuit to work on a remake project about the loveable military robot who gets turned into a peace-lover after getting hit by lightning. The funny thing is that it’s twenty years later, and today’s robots (which are still basically resigned to doing factory work… well, that and military missions over Afghanistan) don’t actually look that much more advanced than Number 5’s original design. With so many appalling remakes getting done these days, I can’t really say I hold much opinion either way about a Short Circuit movie, since my reaction is basically not far from the realm of “Oh yeah, I remember seeing about 20 minutes of that on cable once…”

Edgar Wright, director of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, has renewed his relationship with Working Title Pictures, which covers two movies: Baby Driver, a car/road action movie he will direct first, and At World’s End, which will reteam him with star and cowriter Simon Pegg, in what AICN is speculating might be about a conspiracy that lizard people control the world (sort of like They Live!, starring Rowdy Roddy Piper?). At World’s End is said to be the third in the pair’s trilogy of movies paying homage to three of their favorite genres. Zombies, cop buddies and…? What isn’t stated in any of this is what effect these two projects will have on Wright’s movie version of Marvel Comics’ Ant-Man, which was expected to be a sooner-rather-than-later sort of thing. Now a “not” sort of thing?

Benderspink also acquired movie rights to the graphic novel Pencilneck by Victor Carungi, which sounds like a fairly standard mob/crime thriller, but based on something from the oh-so-popular-these-days “graphic novel” arena.

And now a footnote. As “graphic novels” are seemingly becoming *the* most common source for adaptations, I am suspecting that some screenwriters are just writing their scripts as “graphic novels” first these days as a fast track to getting concepts sold that they would never even get noticed as regular old “spec scripts” without that distinction. Not that this necessarily applies to the three titles announced this week. Just something I might do if I was a screenwriter, honestly. It’s a very tough business.

Production started this week on Billy, a biopic about the influential evangelical minister which focuses on his early years, with Graham to be played by Armie Hammer, the basically unknown actor who is currently signed on to play Batman in the Justice League of America movie. The cast also includes Martin Landau (Space: 1999) and Lindsay Wagner (The Bionic Woman).

Jane Campion (The Piano)’s next film will be Bright Star, a biopic about the English poet, John Keats (Ben Whishaw), who died young at 25. The cast also includes Abbie Cornish, Kerry Fox and Paul Schneider.

Mos Def has joined the cast, as rock and roll pioneer Chuck Berry, of the movie about Cadillac Records, the classic record label that was the home of many of the 20th century’s best blues and early soul performers, which now has a shorter title of just Cadillac.

Universal Pictures has picked up the rights to First Man, a biography of Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon. The script is being adapted by newcomer Nicole Perlman, who has also worked on the movie Challenger, about the investigation of that space shuttle’s destruction, and a Wright Brothers project, One Day at Kitty Hawk. One can’t claim Ms. Perlman’s choice of script projects doesn’t have a theme.

The Informant, the next project for director Steven Soderbergh (Erin Brockovich, the Ocean’s Eleven trilogy), which has long had Matt Damon attached, got a lot more cast members this week, including Scott Bakula (Quantum Leap) and Joel McHale (E!’s The Soup, which is basically Talk Soup, the show from which Greg Kinnear‘s career evolved). The Informant will be a darkly comic thriller that tells the true story of an agribusiness insider’s (Matt Damon) efforts to work with the F.B.I. (Bakula and McHale) to expose a price-fixing scam and other shenanigans.

The G.I. Joe movie, which looks like it will have a cast larger than Roots, got some more cast rumor action this week in the form of Brendan Fraser and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, who (if this isn’t just a fan making it all up) may be playing “Gung Ho” and “Shipwreck”, respectively. I’m not that familiar with the 80s version of G.I. Joe (I grew up on the earlier, one-make-fits-all version), but I will agree with that article’s writer that “Gung Ho” does indeed have a distinct “Village People-ish” look. If Brendan Fraser actually dresses up like that, I might Tivo this one someday.

The movie version of the Gears of Wars videogame got a little bit of press this week, with word that that the project has a screenwriter, Stuart Beattie (Collateral; also cowriting G.I. Joe), and they are aiming for a summer, 2010 release.

Screenwriter Stuart Beattie, who’s working on the two movies in the two items above this one, has another video game adaptation he’d like to work on, which is Halo, which he has taken it upon himself to write a spec script, adapting the novel, Halo: The Fall of Reach, and outlining two additional movies that could follow, forming a trilogy (apparently not adapting the actual Halo trilogy of videogames directly?). Beattie is doing this separately from actually having a deal with anyone involved with the actual project (which at one time was Peter Jackson, but is still Microsoft, the distributor of the games), but I suppose it’s interesting just because it shows that someone who’s done this type of movie before is interested.

Warner Bros has acquired the movie rights to the Hyperion Cantos series of science fiction novels (novels that aren’t graphic, even!), which are set during a space war centering around a planet with electric trees, time tombs that allow for time travel and a giant monster called the Shrike that impales people on metal trees. I can’t help but notice that this acquisition comes just two weeks after the news that the Dune property is returning to movie theaters.

An adaptation of The Matarese Circle, a novel by Robert Ludlum (the Bourne trilogy) by the writing team behind the recent 3:10 to Yuma remake, is being shopped around Hollywood, with Denzel Washington attached to star as one of two spies (one American, one Russian) who have been enemies for years, but now must team up to fight some bad guys.

The movie adaptation of DC Comics’ Teen Titans, about a super team formed by the sidekicks of various grown up superheroes (led by Batman’s Robin), is still alive, with word this week from Mark Verheiden (writer of several episodes of Smallville and Battlestar Galactica) of what he’s got in mind for the project.

A remake of the 1980s horror quasi-classic, C.H.U.D., is apparently in the works… sort of, with word from Bloody-Disgusting.com that the project might actually be called Urban Decay, in which case, I guess it becomes just a movie about some other type of cannibalistic humanoid underground dwellers?